How to add sleeves to the Harrison Shirtdress

Your first thought might be: easy, I’ll just sew the sleeves on from the Harrison Shirt. However, the Harrison Shirtdress is drafted with a sleeveless armscye which means it isn’t quite as simple as that. Sleeveless armscyes are drafted differently to sleeved armscyes, coming up higher under the arm, and narrower in the shoulder. However, if you have a copy of the Harrison Shirt and the Harrison Shirtdress, then you can make this one adjustment and then add sleeves without a problem.

Place a piece of tracing paper over the two pieces. Now trace off the armscye of the Shirt piece (in green below), but for the rest, trace the Shirtdress piece. So your final piece is shaped like the long shirtdress piece with the Shirt armscye.

Repeat this process with the middle piece

And then the center front piece

Now you have your new, altered pieces (remember to transfer the notches, too!):

Alter the back

Now, we need to go through the same process for the back pieces. First, create the new side back piece:

Then for the yoke, it’s easy: just use the Shirt yoke rather than the Shirtdress yoke! No adjustments needed.

And here are your revised back pieces:

And that’s it! You can now sew up your Shirtdress using the Harrison Shirt sleeve pieces and instructions from the Shirt pattern.

10 thoughts on “How to add sleeves to the Harrison Shirtdress”

Thank you Jenny! Very helpful – I’ll be doing this for sure because I do like (generally) even a little cap type of sleeve. I’m just now working on my first Harrison (muslin) and once I get that right then onto my first real one in cotton (I’m thinking small whale wine corduroy) then my good one in silk 🙂 Then onto my shirt dresses for summer!

+1!
I understand you would need to redraft the whole bodice (armscythes!) and not only the sleeves themselves, but I would be more than willing to pay for the pattern add-on! My mother is in love with the Upton Dress and I wanted to make it for her as a gift, but then she asked me to add sleeves because otherwise she says she would feel uncomfortable wearing it. However, I am not an experienced enough sewist to draft them, that’s why the pattern has been sitting untouched in my drawer ever since I bought it last year :-(… So pretty, pretty please, dear Jenny: Sleeves! <3

Hello! I was just wondering how much extra fabric I’ll need if I want to add a full Harrison sleeve? I’ll be making a size 24 (in metric 😉).
Thank you! Cannot wait to order my fabric for this. I’ll make a pile of Concord t-shirts while I wait ☺